Many disorders can affect toe or finger joints, causing pain and preventing the foot or hand from functioning as they should. These problems may be inherited from abnormally long toes, flat feet or high arches, or acquired from wearing poor fitting footwear or a fractured toe, which can further aggravate the deformities and cause more pain. Toe deformities in, for example, adults result mainly from an imbalance of the tendons, causing them to stretch or tighten abnormally. Arthritis is another major cause of discomfort and deformity in fingers and toes. The most common digital deformities in the foot are hammertoes, claw toes and overlapping and underlapping toes.
Podiatrists and orthopedists commonly use surgical procedures to alleviate the discomfort of, for example, a hammertoe and other abnormalities of the toe and finger joints and to prevent recurrence of the deformity. In the case of a hammertoe, surgeons may perform a proximal interphalangeal joint (“PIPJ”) arthrodesis with the use of, for example, a Kirschner wire (“K-wire”), or insert a prosthetic device into adjoining phalanges of the toe, which serve to function as a normal knuckle or joint would. In the past, a surgeon used a threaded and/or ribbed/barbed implant made from a metallic or thermoplastic material, which are not biocompatible and have issues with osseointegration.